12 minute read
Savanah McCarty | Restoration Ranch: A Story of Hope & Horses
Story by Genevieve Dahl
Images by Chloe Nostrant
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It takes a special kind of person to look at a dump site and see potential buried beneath piles of discarded junk and bags of trash. Taking on large land renovations requires an ability to view what others might consider irreversible damage through the lens of opportunity, a chance to return and restore a seemingly lost cause to full potential.
Some might call this ability having a vision, others may call it faith, but whatever you want to label it, horseman and conscious rancher Savanah McCarty has it. When she first stepped foot onto the Montana ranch that now houses S+S Stables, the equine center for mental health she owns, operates, and dedicates to healing, she didn’t see an abandoned dump with broken fences; she saw the bones of her dream and the bones were good.
“I fell in love with this property the moment I felt the earth under my feet,” McCarty recalls. “I was standing there in the Golden Valley, surrounded by the Spanish Peaks, listening to the soundtrack of the Gallatin River, and I knew I had found the home of S+S Stables.”
Located in the Gallatin Gateway, just 20 minutes outside of Bozeman, it’s hard to believe S+S Stables has yet to exist for a full calendar year. McCarty has longstanding Montana connections; when she packed horses through the Beartooth Mountains for the first time, she knew she would put down roots in what she regards as the most beautiful corner of the globe.
In June of 2021, she did just that by pulling up to her new Montana home and worksite with a big dream, not quite enough funding to call it a for sure bet, and a trailer of three horses, colts she had raised herself. With the deadline of a Montana winter looming, she knew there was no time to worry, regret, or wonder. If she was going to renovate this ranch and bring her vision to life, she had to roll up her sleeves and get to work.
Removing damage and restoring worth is nothing new for McCarty. In her early years, she was a social worker, a career that motivated her first grand-scale effort, the nationally-renowned Wild Souls Ranch— an equine therapy wraparound program nestled in the redwood forests of Fortuna, California.
McCarty herself grew up in the California Child Welfare system. Her father was never present in her life, and her biological mother gave up custody when McCarty was five years old, a perfectly tender age to fully feel the trauma of abandonment without being emotionally equipped to process the cause of it without leaning on self-blame and shame. From there, she bounced around from her aging grandparent’s care to extended relatives’ homes, all with heart-wrenching court dates and failed attempts to reunify with her birth mom sprinkled in between.
At the age of six, McCarty met a woman who would change her life, a horseman named Marlene. For the next six years of her life, while he was able, McCarty’s grandfather would bring her to Marlene’s ranch. In horses, McCarty experienced trust and unconditional love for what she recalls as the very first time, and with one particular horse, a lively quarter horse mare named Sheza, she developed an unbreakable bond.
“Sheza and Savanah, we are the S and S of S+S Stables. Sheza is the horse that saved me and inspired my life’s work.”
After her grandfather received a tough cancer diagnosis, McCarty’s childhood returned to a whirlwind of chaos and unknown. As a teenager, she shuffled back and forth between homes of relenting relatives willing to “take a chance” on her, doing her best to stay small in hopes of being regarded as not too much of a burden and at least worthy of a permanent place to call home. Heartbreakingly enough, that never happened, and McCarty aged out of the system without an adult to guide her, but she did have that horse, Sheza, a forever friend gifted to her by that kindhearted rancher Marlene.
It is likely McCarty’s own experience as a ward of the court cultivated her gift to see the beauty in barren land, hurt people, and lost souls. When she started Wild Souls Ranch in 2013 with less than $10,000 in annual funds to rent a 10’x10’ shed in a leased pasture, she faced several rejections and glass ceilings. People had a hard time understanding her vision of using horses and equine exposure therapy to heal those in the foster care system of rural northern California, let alone trusting an unsupported 25-year-old without an entrepreneurial backstory. But when McCarty shoveled hay out of that shed, she knew it was the beginning of something beautiful, despite what the naysayers said.
And she was correct. At the end of fiscal year 2021, Wild Souls Ranch was a $3 million organization with a beautiful 13-acre rolling hills northern California ranch, a staff of 20, a full board of directors, and state recognition as a way paver thanks in part to the benchmark foster care wraparound program McCarty created. It appears that McCarty successfully brought her dream to life, which made her resignation announcement especially surprising to her community of now supporters. In early 2021, McCarty announced she was stepping down from her role as Executive Director of Wild Souls Ranch to pursue a new project in Bozeman, Montana.
McCarty’s eyes light up when you ask her why she would leave a thriving organization to transform a parcel of untended land into what, seemingly, she already had built in California, an equine therapy ranch.
“I left Wild Souls Ranch in a great place. We transformed social services for those in the foster care program in northern California, the organization is thriving, and I’m proud of that, but now I am answering the call to Montana to build on this idea that horses can heal trauma. I want to help all populations of children, and I want to help adults who are hurting, veterans, really anyone needing mental health support.”
It is more than her quest to help others— S+S Stables fulfills a personal mission for McCarty as well. By establishing S+S stables as a business rather than a state-funded non-profit like her previous endeavor, McCarty is free from the bureaucratic restraints she has been bound by her whole life. Growing up within the foster care system and then trying to transform it into something more effective from the outside was a personal pursuit McCarty felt she had taken as far as she could.
There are emergent mental health methodologies undergoing scientific research right now, and McCarty wants her facility to be a safe space for providers to explore them, once approved. From the EmPath sensory approach to the use of psilocybin therapy in adults with major depression, OCD, and anxiety, McCarty believes it imperative to practice mental therapies without the often-lagging restraints that came with running a governmentsupported organization.
“After carrying Wild Souls Ranch through the pandemic and dealing with years of bureaucracy, I was so far removed from the heart of the work I had set out to do that my own mental health was suffering,” McCarty shares. “S+S Stables is me returning to my authentic self.” McCarty is genuine; she exudes realness and seems to prefer to live as an open book. She is on a continual quest for growth and in relentless pursuit of holistic living. Her hearty laugh echoes through the arena she has now repaired, and she constantly sweeps her long, windswept hair out of her face to reveal the smile of someone who is, at long last, living their truth.
The overarching goal of S+S Stables is to ensure that all mental health care providers in the area have access to equine therapy resources at an affordable rate. The Bozeman ranch provides the space, horses, trainers, and programs that local counselors, therapists, and mental health organizations need to offer equine-related mental health services. It is McCarty’s belief that once she has proof of concept in Bozeman, she can open additional mental health ranch locations in other parts of Montana, and perhaps, if her wildest of dreams comes true, across the country.
In less than six months, McCarty has transformed 13-acres of Gallatin Gateway land into an astonishingly beautiful healing space. The fences are mended, the junk has been hauled away, the grass is growing, and the empty grain silo has been converted into a tiny home that McCarty shares with her black cat, Diane. Clarity Counseling Center in Bozeman is now able to offer equine psychotherapy services by operating out of S+S Stables three days a week. Bear Hug Cattle Company ran their Veteran ranch workforce training program on the property over the summer months. War Party Movement, a non-profit dedicated to Native American communities, is working with McCarty to weave equine therapeutic plans into a scholarship program they offer to human trafficking survivors.
Though S+S Stables is a full-service equine center and conscious horse ranch, a place for people of all ages, helping children who have experienced trauma live full lives is a cause that will forever be close to McCarty’s heart. Sheza, the ranch’s namesake and the self-proclaimed love of McCarty’s life, lives on in spirit at the ranch and through S+S Stable’s Social Emotional Learning program.
“Sheza was the first living thing I was able to truly connect with, the first being I trusted, my first love.” McCarty personally knows the damage that trauma, abuse, and abandonment can cause, the havoc they can wreak on a child’s self-worth, confidence, and ability to grow, but she also knows first-hand the incredible healing power of horses.
Children without obvious trauma who face more common social and emotional challenges can benefit from equine exposure as well. Several studies have demonstrated that animal-assisted therapy offers positive psychosocial outcomes for children. Equine therapy has been shown to have encouraging effects on children with autism, 1 ADHD, 2 and those who need support navigating the social-emotional stress modern society presents. 3 McCarty designed the Social Emotional Learning after school program at S+S Stables to support parents who are looking to proactively nurture and develop a social and emotional toolkit for their children.
McCarty shines when facilitating these afternoon sessions. Surrounded by a circle of tiny humans sitting on burlap sacks in the arena, she crouches down to their level and introduces them to one of the ranch’s colts, Gus. One by one, the kids meet Gus. They run their little fingers through his mane, hug his neck, giggle as they feed him carrots, and help McCarty clean out his horseshoes. Throughout the program, these children will assist the staff with grooming and providing basic care for the ranch’s family of horses, Gus and his four mates: Sparkles, Rona, Lady May, and Kash. Eventually, these children will grow to fully know and trust the S+S Stables horses, and by the end of the program, they will ride each one, bareback.
Looking at the before photographs of the 13-acre Gallatin parcel that is now S+S stables, it’s near impossible to conceptualize how one woman was able to transform what was a dumpsite into what stands today— not just a renovated ranch, but a horse haven and a healing space, a place where those with baggage and bruises can come and be reborn into their true selves. If these near contradictory images are representative of McCarty’s vision to transform mental health in Montana with equine therapy, the horizons are hopeful indeed.
GENEVIEVE DAHL is an extroverted introvert who has never met a stranger. By day, she is VP of Creative for Hotel McCoy, and by night (and weekends) she reads and reviews books, writes stories, and raises daughters. She loves to connect with readers on instagram @ReadingRainCloud and on Twitter at @GenevieveDahl_
Maujean, Annick, Christopher Pepping, and Elizabeth Kendall. “A Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials of Animal-Assisted Therapy on Psychosocial Outcomes.” Taylor & Francis, April 2015
Srinivasan, Sudha M, David Cavagnino, and Anjana Bhat. “Effects of Equine Therapy on Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review.” Review journal of autism and developmental disorders. U.S. National Library of Medicine, June 2018
Strandheim, De Ridder, and Cuypers. “The Effect of Therapeutic Horseback Riding on 5 Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: A Pilot Study.” Journal of alternative and complementary medicine (New York, N.Y.). U.S. National Library of Medicine
